A public lecture by Professor Michael Hauskeller from the Department of Philosophy. We all want to live a meaningful life. Sometimes we feel we do, sometimes we feel we don't. If we don't, we search for it, moving towards a new way of life, a different job, or a different country, or perhaps towards a new faith, a new ideology, or a new leader. Whole worlds are built and destroyed in search for meaning. This talk examines the centrality of meaning in our lives, how it informs the course of our actions, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

Liverpool is a unique and diverse city and this event explores some of the ways in which the communities which have made their home in Liverpool have established their identities in a city which saw itself in the run up to the City of Culture 2008 as ‘The World in One City’.

This process continues to be a fraught one, shaped by the experience of conflict in communities and countries of origin and often with civic authorities in Liverpool itelf. The event provides a unique insight into what it means to be a citizen of the city of Liverpool and it explores the mobility of memories across languages, spaces and cultures.

The Liverpool Screen School Research Seminar is an interdisciplinary series of talks that explore the content, operation and impact of the media; the role of culture and identity in shaping public policy; and research methods in creative disciplines.

Dr James Kenworth (Middlesex) will present a paper entitled Public Spaces, Public Words: Towards a Localist Theatre.

James KenworthAbstractI will explore the writing, production and performances of two Newham-based, issue-led and awareness-raising plays: Everybody’s World and Dementia’s Journey, which dealt with elder abuse and dementia respectively in the South Asian community.

Both plays were commissioned by Newham-based charity, EKTA Project, and both featured a volunteer cast, a community participatory feature I was to develop and expand in the Newham Trilogy series of plays I wrote between 2012 and 2016. The use of a 'mixed economy' or volunteer cast has been consistent feature of my work as a playwright. I will explore this method or approach in the context of working with elderly volunteers, some with dementia, in these two EKTA plays.

Both plays were commissioned expressly to raise awareness of difficult, complex and sensitive issues within a particular ethnic community. The purpose of these plays was in effect to bring about real, practical change in communities and individuals and I will explore the process whereby I navigated the sometimes delicate balance between satisfying the commissioners’ need for a proselytizing/informational role in the play and an audience’s desire for a good story.

Ivan Rogers, the UK’s former ambassador to the EU, will be joining in conversation with Professor Mark Boyle to discuss his short, elegant essay – 9 Lessons in Brexit.

“Remember the words of Ivan Rogers the next time you hear some plausible posh boy in a suit telling you a ‘no deal’ wouldn’t hurt at all and might even be a jolly good thing” – J.K. Rowling

Two and a half years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, the political debate over Brexit seems as intense and complicated as ever. Who and what can we trust? And how on earth do we make sense of it all? In 9 Lessons on Brexit, Ivan draws from his unique position to tell some home truths about the failure of the British political class and the flaws, dishonesty and confusion inherent to the UK’s approach to Brexit so far.

Ivan Rogers is a former British civil servant, who was the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union from 4th November 2013 until his resignation on 3rd January 2017.

Mark Boyle is the Director of the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place at Liverpool University, a city-facing research institute connecting academic expertise with the needs of the policy community.

500 years after his death, we celebrate Leonardo as a master artist, inventor and universal genius. But what is often forgotten is that he was a man like us. A man of his times, who faced difficulties and frustrations and often had to deal with ignorance, superstition and closed mindedness. How did he cope? He described himself as a “disciple of experience”, anticipating of about a century the adoption of the scientific method by Galileo and Descartes. Massimo Polidoro will take us back in time to see how Leonardo thought and reasoned and will help us understand if his approach to life still holds something useful for us today.

Massimo Polidoro is a writer and an internationally recognized “mystery detective.” He began his career as James Randi’s apprentice and is the cofounder and head of the Italian skeptics group CICAP. He is a TV personality in Italy, a research fellow for CSI, he has published 50 books and is a longtime columnist for the Skeptical Inquirer. He has a series on his YouTube channel investigating strange stories.